Simple example applications for the Thinnect embedded node platform ecosystem.
The embedded node platform consists of a relatively generic embedded real-time operating system, microcontroller/platform APIs and libraries and a simple buildsystem. The platform is mostly focused for devices that use an 802.15.4 compatible wireless radio for communications. The specific 802.15.4 messaging schema is based on and compatible with the TinyOS ActiveMessage principles.
Blink is a simple application that blinks LEDs at different frequencies. It demonstrates OS setup and using threads, mutexes and timers.
See Blink readme for details.
Dataflash is a test application that tries to wake a JEDEC SPI dataflash and read the ID.
See DataFlash readme for details.
Hello is a test application that prints HelloWorld!. It does not initalize an RTOS kernel.
See Hello readme for details.
RadioCountToLeds is a simple application that broadcasts a counter value to the network and displays received counter values on LEDs. It demonstrates OS setup, using threads, mutexes, timers and the MistComm Radio API.
See RadioCountToLeds readme for details.
TempSender is a simple radio broadcast demo application that sends a fake temperature reading in the Mist Resource data format.
See Tempsender readme for details.
Currently the examples only cover some SiLabs Wireless Gecko based devices.
There are several SiLabs development boards that are supported, see
dev-platforms or run make in one
of the example projects for a list of supported targets.
Currently the build process supports only Linux systems, it has been tested
on Ubuntu 18.04, but should work on most Linux distributions, provided the
components installed from *.deb packages are handled manually or compiled from
source on non-deb distributions.
Installation is covered in detail in INSTALL.
This repository relies on several dependencies that are all publically available on GitHub and they have been linked to the repository as submodules. After cloning the repository, the submodules need to be initialized and updated.
git clone [email protected]:thinnect/node-apps.git
cd node-apps
git submodule init
git submodule update
Initially the submodules will be pointing to the correct commits/states of their respective repositories, but in a detached-head state. The actual branches they should be checked out to are listed in the gitmodules file. Install git-submodule-gizmos to get a tool for easier management of the branches.
Radio communications are performed throught the MistComm communications API. The API is still a prototype, but is intended to support global addressing without having to know the network hierarcy. It uses IEEE EUI-64 identifiers for identifying endpoints (device identity, not just network address). The MistComm layer is supposed to include an address translation layer to resolve the next-hop address for EUI-64 destinations, but this has not been finalized and for the current examples, it only implements direct ActiveMessage addressing. The MistComm API will change
SPI/I2C interfaces are handled through RETARGET_Spi and RETARGET_I2C APIs, that themselves are configured through retargetspiconfig.h and retargeti2cconfig.h. This limits the application to a single instance of each bus, if needed, additional instances need to be handled manually. RETARGET_Spi supports several chip-select signals.
All the example applications and some libraries use the
lll library for logging to an UART. Each
platform has a designated Debug UART, which is configured in the platforms
retargetserialconfig.h. Loglevels can be tweaked by setting the BASE_LOG_LEVEL
and modifying the individual levels in each examples respective loglevels.h file.
A good tool for receiving the output from a serial port is serial-logger.
The node platform is built around the ARM CMSIS RTOS abstraction layer and therefore it would not be too complex to support different operating systems, however currently only FreeRTOS is used in practice and there may be some direct hooks into the FreeRTOS kernel in the code.
The compiled binary includes an information header that provides some details on the binary and a checksum. Run the headeredit tool against the compiled binaries to see it.
To build an example application, enter the applications directory and build
it for one of the supported platforms with make PLATFORM_NAME and flash to the
device with make PLATFORM_NAME install.
For example to install on a Thunderboard Sense, run:
make thunderboard
make thunderboard install
The thunderboard target and other SiLabs development targets use the built-in J-Link programmer by default and only a single board can be connected to the PC at a time.
The Thinnect TestSystemBoard has a built-in ft2232d based programmer and uses a modified version of OpenOCD (see INSTALL for details). A specific device can be selected by specifying the FTDI_ID variable:
make tsb install FTDI_ID=3
Code in this repository must conform to the BARR-C:2018 coding rules with the following permitted exceptions:
- Lines are allowed to be up to 120 characters long, keeping them shorter is however recommended.
- static module-level variables must be prefixed with m_, global ones with g_.